


Luce e ombre

by sheafrotherdon



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Kindness, Loyalty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:20:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25388185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: The discomfort is so new that it startles her, and she searches her memory to remember a time before she was immortal: a time when a cut, a scrape, a bruise hurt for longer than a moment, long enough to interrupt sleep.  The memories don’t come(Set the night after the events of the movie.)
Comments: 76
Kudos: 424





	Luce e ombre

Andy wakes, the wound in her side aching painfully. The discomfort is so new that it startles her, and she searches her memory to remember a time before she was immortal: a time when a cut, a scrape, a bruise hurt for longer than a moment, long enough to interrupt sleep. The memories don’t come; she has only the knowledge that there must have been pain in her life before she first died. There is no feeling to attach to that past, nothing that she can use to navigate this new stiffness, this gnawing ache. She quietly gets out of bed, and pads slowly into the kitchen to find the medical supplies Joe bought before he took a needle and thread in hand and neatly sewed her up. She sits in a chair and contemplates the gauze and tape, steels herself to be brisk and efficient and take care of things as she always does.

Nicky moves as silently as she does, and appears beside her to take the gauze out of her hand before she can lift her shirt to pull away the old dressing. “Let me,” he says softly.

“I’m fine.” She has to be, feels the necessity of it without knowing exactly why.

“You are always fine,” Nicky says kindly, and gestures for her to lift her shirt’s hem. His fingertips are cool as he pulls the old gauze and tape away from the wound. “Joe did well.”

“Hmmm,” says Andy, looking across the room at the corner of a cabinet rather than at the gash in her side. After all she’s seen done to her body, it should make no sense to recoil from a simple exit wound. But everything is different - she feels it as a pressure in her chest, words that won’t form, a feeling for which she has no language to express.

Nicky opens a new gauze packet, preferring it to the one Andy had held for reasons that likely make sense. “Do you remember what I said on the train?”

“Before or after we dreamed of Nile?”

“After.” He looks up, gives her a familiar, crooked smile. She’ll miss this warmth. “I told Booker that he must remember what it was like – to feel lost, and confused, and alone.”

“Yeah.” Andy presses her lips together against discomfort as Nicky tapes the new gauze in place.

He pats the dressed wound and sits back. “I have been thinking about how much the same must be true when a person loses their immortality.”

Andy meets his gaze steadily, as if this weren’t always going to happen; as if he wasn’t always going to be the person to come to her and have this conversation. “Oh?”

“We know what it is to live,” Nicky says, not looking away. “But you are preparing to die.”

Andy lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “I’ve died before.”

“Not like this, _cara_.”

Andy would bristle at the diminutive if she weren’t so tired, so goddamn tired, and aching from hip to spine. And she knows Nicky means it, that she is dear to him as he is dear to her, as they all are to each other, and she thinks for a second of Booker, alone, and winces.

“It hurts,” Nicky observes.

She wonders for a moment if he can read her mind before she realizes he’s talking about her injury. “I’ve had worse.”

“Yes.” Nicky searches in the plastic bag on the table and pulls out a pill bottle. He shakes it. “You should take these.”

“Nicky. I don’t need meds.” She never has before.

Nicky nods his head. “This hurt will not fade for some time.” He offers her the bottle. “It will take days to heal.” He pushes back from the table and crosses to the sink where glasses are drying, fills one with water and brings it back. “Here.”

She stares at the bottle.

“It is not a narcotic. You will not be less able to fight.”

“Oh, fuck you,” she says softly, but takes the glass anyway, sets it down and reaches for the pill bottle, shaking two into her hand.

Nicky sits down again. “Do you fear it?”

Andy swallows and wonders if she can just pretend she doesn’t understand his question. She sips more water, then sighs. “I don’t know.”

“Do you want it?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

“But you did. In the . . .” Nicky waves a hand. “Laboratory.”

She owes him her honesty. Secrets kill people – she’s seen it happen time and time again, no matter how large or small the omission. “When Booker shot me . . .” She watches Nicky’s fingers shift into a fist and wonders if he’s conscious of the movement. “When he shot me . . . something broke. Inside.”

“That he would betray us is . . .” Nicky offers softly.

She nods.

Nicky reaches out to cover her hand with his own. “You should know I have taken a handful of oaths in my life – to the Church, to the cross, to Yusuf.” He smiles very faintly. “I also took an oath when you found us.”

Andy shakes her head. “When?”

“In the privacy of my own heart,” Nicky replies. “That I would make the world right each day for you. For all of us.”

Andy shifts in her seat, searching for a way to hold his goodness at arm’s length, to play keep away with the certainty that soon she will leave this behind. Her wound twists and she hisses at the sharp pain.

Nicky gestures with his free hand toward her side. “You should sleep. Let it heal.”

“I can’t.”

Nicky offers a low hum of understanding. “You are thinking too much.”

She nods, feeling awkward, feeling as though something is rushing toward her that she can’t escape.

“What about?”

Andy swallows hard, links their fingers together and counts each breath until she can speak. “I was alone for so long, Nicky. And now?”

“Now?”

“I’m alone again.”

“No,” Nicky murmurs, shaking his head “You are not.”

“I’m going to die.”

“Someday,” he says softly. “And we will be there.”

Andy leans forward, rests her forehead against their hands for a moment. Nicky’s free hand settles at the nape of her neck. 

She’s lost so many people across so many lifetimes, seen them grow old and die in more ways than she can count. She’s learned -- she thought -- to ride the ebb and flow of grief through every loss, to accept blame when it was hers to shoulder, and to cling to purpose when there was no fault to redress. But this, _this_ is a moment she is not prepared for. She has always been ready to die in battle, to sacrifice herself, to be gone in a moment when it is her time. But to live with those she loves and know she is leaving . . . 

“I will miss you so much,” she says, lifting her head. Her voice is thick and unsteady, even to her own ears.

Nicky’s eyes are shining. “I will not mourn you while you are still here.”

She offers the barest nod. “Fair.”

“And you should not mourn us either.”

“Unfair.”

Nicky tsks at her, but his gentle smile is back. “Try to sleep. Everything can be healed by sleep.”

“Everything?”

“It’s a theory I’m working on. I’ve been gathering evidence for a while.” He stands and pulls her up with him.

“Your whole life?”

He grins. “My whole life.” He seems to study her for a moment, steady and calm.. “And Andy. What lives we have lived.”

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to siria for beta! Luce e ombre means 'light and shadow' and comes from a poem by Ribka Sibhatu, part of which reads: 
> 
> _Tocca la figlia che_
> 
> _cammina tra_
> 
> _luci e ombra,_
> 
> _coraggio e paura._
> 
> _-_
> 
> _Touch the daughter_
> 
> _who walks between_
> 
> _shadow and light_
> 
> _courage and fear._


End file.
